Opinions of Friday, 24 October 2014

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Asiedu-Nketia In Panic Mode

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Oct. 21, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Obviously, the National Democratic Congress' Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia is in both a panic mode and a self-delusional state of denial when the NDC's General-Secretary cynically, albeit ineffectually, attempts to read backwards last Saturday's New Patriotic Party presidential primary blowout victory, by curiously claiming that Nana Akufo-Addo's unprecedented margin of 94.35-percent of the total valid votes cast actually reflects a precipitous decline in the political fortunes of the third-time presidential candidate of the country's largest opposition party (See "Akufo-Addo Defeat in 2016 Will Be Bigger" Enquirer 10/21/14).

Maybe the NDC General-Secretary needs to be reminded of his first public statement to the media in the wake of the inexcusable travesty that was Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan's declaration of then-Transitional President John Dramani Mahama as the clear and undisputed winner of the 2012 presidential election. Back then, a morally agitated Mr. Asiedu-Nketia faulted the total lack of vigilance at the polling station level, on the part of the Akufo-Addo Campaign, for the failure of the New Patriotic Party to clinch a well-deserved victory. Significantly, the same issue would later be brought up as foolproof evidence of electoral fraud before the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court that heard the Akufo-Addo-led Presidential Petition that, indeed, even the frontline capos of the National Democratic Congress did not agree with the Electoral Commissioner's interpretation of the results of the 2012 Presidential Election.

What the foregoing clearly points to is the fact that Mr. Asiedu-Nketia sorely lacks the courage of his convictions. It also widely exposes the apocalyptic failure of the major NDC players to strategically railroad the New Patriotic Party, by having a much weaker presidential aspirant like Mr. Alan Kyerematen faceoff against a grossly incompetent, albeit filthily moneyed and powerful, administrator like President Mahama. There is also absolutely no doubt that NDC party chieftains like Mr. Asiedu-Nketia are deathly afraid of the massive rallying of staunch NPP delegates, members and sympathizers behind the candidacy of Nana Akufo-Addo.

Of course, what such massive support also means is that, finally, it has dawned on the Danquah-Busia-Dombo camp that the most significant agenda for Election 2016 is to win power and the sacred mandate of the people, and do so massively well beyond the shenanigans of any shady and reprobate characters on the staff of Ghana's Electoral Commission.

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